Dark Souls - Two More Reviews

Before going into detail as to why I’m disappointed with what should have been a good niche game for PC, I need to be upfront and tell you that Dark Souls requires Games for Windows Live. It saves your progress constantly to your online profile, so you have to be logged in constantly to play (I had the Steam version, so this might not be the case in other versions). Thus, no access to the Internet means no gameplay. And if you hate Games for Windows Live, then you’re out of luck. It also has a weird effect on multiplayer. It seems as if Dark Souls uses a kind of cloud-based peer-to-peer setup. Even if you’re not actually in a multiplayer game, others who are in your part of the cloud are sometimes visible as ghosts, and you can leave messages for one another scrawled on surfaces (a nice touch). So, the good news is that anyone eager for multiplayer will find it incredibly easy to get hooked up with people. The bad news is that you have no choice but to be online and available for multiplayer.

I won’t deny, for games of this caliber I am generally not a PC gamer… preferring the controls of a controller be it for the Playstation, XBox or even a trusty WiiMote. I was curious as to how they would adapt the control schema to the keyboard given the sometimes need for quick reaction and careful movements. To put it into perspective as to how my experience was with the keyboard controls… I barely got out of the prison cell starting point before moving to the pad. This might just be me, but the combination of mouse and keyboard controls do not work and if you do not have a game pad (Eg. Xbox 360 PC Pad) for your PC….. good luck to you there!